NEVILLE CALLAM from the
General Secretary
The Bible in the Those who translate the Bible into a people’s heart language signal
how much they value culture as a fitting context for the proclamation of the Gospel. They communicate the Christian faith in terms that reflect high regard for the integrity of people’s identity and, in the process, they make a major contribution to destigmatizing people’s culture. In his celebrated work, Translating the Message: The Missionary
Impact on Culture, Lamin Sanneh discusses translation in terms that go “beyond the narrow, technical bounds of textual work.” Sanneh’s analysis shows the importance of efforts to render the biblical text in a people’s heart language. According to Sanneh, “Vernacular translation begins with the effort to equip the gospel with terms of familiarity… [I]n endeavoring to accomplish this vernacular task, translation may make commonplace passages of Scripture come alive, while also stimulating indigenous religious and cultural renewal.” Confidence in the value of the vernacular “has encouraged the role of recipient cultures as decisive for the final appropriation of the message.” A case in point is the production of Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testament,
a project undertaken by the Bible Society of the West Indies under the leadership of Courtney Stewart. Hopefully, this project represents the approaching final stage in the liberation of the Jamaican people from the confinement imposed on them by Christian mission as a surrogate for Western colonialism. The translators of this Nyuu Testament have succeeded in relativizing the status of English as the language that bears the message of the Gospel in the Jamaican context. By so doing, the translators have affirmed the people’s capacity for critical reflection in their own terms. At the same time, they are illustrating the power of the Gospel when it is dressed in the clothes of the people receiving it and communicated in terms that ring true in their hearts. Over the years, many people have played a vital role in making the
Scriptures available to people across the world in their own languages. We remember the work of persons like Venerable Bede and John Wycliffe and the Lollards; William Tyndale whose legacy, in the words of Bishop Westcott, lies in his decision that the “Bible should be popular and not literary, speaking in a simple dialect.” J. R. Green, writing in 1882, pointed to the effect of Bible translation on literature among Britons. Meanwhile, among the German-speaking people, Martin Luther’s 1534 translation of the Bible has had a decisive effect on the development of the German language. It is not insignificant that Baptists have been among the many
Christians who have reflected appropriate respect for people’s cultures and have labored to secure the Bible in the languages we use. We remember the seminal linguistic work undertaken, for example, by William Carey in India, the Judsons in Myanmar, and Thomas Jefferson Bowen, whose work in Nigeria laid the foundations not only for the Yoruba language that is widely spoken today in Nigeria, Benin and Togo, but also for the Bible in Yoruba.
Among the many other Baptists whose work in Bible translation
we celebrate are Lien-Hwa Chow, translator and co-chief editor of the Revised Chinese Union Version and of Today’s Chinese Version. We also celebrate Lien-Hwa Chow’s contribution as chair of the translation team for the Chinese Interconfessional Bible, produced jointly by Roman Catholics and Protestants. We remember the vital role played by Masahiro Kanoy in the
translation of the Bible into Japanese and especially his work on the editorial team for the New Common Bible translation. We also recall Hrahsel Sawiluaia Luaia’s 20 years of labor to produce the Bible in Mizo - the language of the Mizo people whose largest populations are in India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.
4 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE Tony Cupit and Mapusiya Kolo were among those
who translated the New Testament and sections of the Old Testament into Kyaka Enga, one of the languages of Papua New Guinea, and Les Haydon and George Stubbs from Australia helped render the Bible in the language of the Lenje people of Zambia. The National Baptist Convention of Brazil has
provided the Bible in the languages of the Tucano and the Aparai people of the Amazon. Meanwhile, the National Baptist Convention of Chile has sponsored Bible translation into the language of the indigenous Mapuche people of south-central Chile and south- western Argentina. Of course, we know that these and many other Baptists have played only a small part in what is a major undertaking carried out by the entire Christian community, sometimes working most effectively through interchurch partnership. The work of these translators is vital because, as a controversial Meth- odist missionary/anthropologist once said, however fluently people may speak a foreign language, “its words can never feel to them as their native words. To express the dear and intimate things which are the very breath and substance of life, a [person] will fall back on the tongue he learnt not at school, but in the house . . . He may bargain in the other, or pass examinations in it, but . . . if you wish to reach his heart you will address him in [his heart] language.” We owe a debt of gratitude to all who labor in the ministry of Bible translation. Today, as Bible translation work continues, should we not celebrate and support the work being done by the Wycliffe Bible translators, the Faith Comes by Hearing Project, and especially the Bible Societies whose understanding of the significance of Bible translation for the process of world evangelization is so laudable?
Vernacular
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